A proper diagnosis, likely some good medicine, delivered with an unfortunate bedside manner.
With the entire European project severely threatened, Belgium’s former prime minister offers a prescription to save the European Union.
Following the bailout of Greece and Britain’s vote to leave the union, amid a boiling refugee crisis and an unprecedented threat of terrorism, the EU’s continued survival no longer seems assured. How, then, to save it? A member of the European Parliament since 2009, Verhofstadt (The Financial Crisis—How Europe Can Save the World, 2009, etc.) argues, unsurprisingly, for complete integration along the lines of the American federal model. Few will dispute his analysis of the union’s current infirmities: a sluggish economy, a 25 percent youth unemployment rate, low levels of labor mobility, no common budget, a pitifully weak defense community, lax security arrangements, and a common currency unsupported by a true political union. As he addresses these and other issues, the author hits all the predictable notes about transparency and democracy while calling for more streamlined institutions and even a two-tier reorganization (full or associated membership). For the current mess, he faults EU elites for their “quick fix politics” and for attempting a “step-by-step Europe” instead of committing wholeheartedly to union. Mostly, though, he blames those under “the nationalist delusion that still haunts Europe”: predatory outsiders like Vladimir Putin; troublemaking insiders like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Britain’s Tony Blair, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán; provocateurs like France’s Marine Le Pen and Britain’s Nigel Farage. But why gratuitously insult the ghosts of Margaret Thatcher, Charles de Gaulle, even Milton Friedman, serious people all, or more grievously, rudely dismiss the millions of euroskeptics loath to surrender sovereignty to a union whose benefits have yet to outweigh its burdens? Verhofstadt takes a swipe at assuaging their concerns but ultimately rejects these voices as merely xenophobic, crudely populist, or absurdly emotional. His barely concealed contempt for those who have frustrated his cherished project will likely win few converts among a constituency essential for the EU’s success.
A proper diagnosis, likely some good medicine, delivered with an unfortunate bedside manner.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09685-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
